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LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, 
 PAVIS 
 
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 Cforat/s Jttttms 
 
 AT THE 
 
 assmar* (Ktoarbs Institute, 
 
 JUNE i5TH, 1903. 
 
 HARRISON & SONS, PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HIS MAJESTY, 
 ST. MARTIN'S LANE. 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF CALIFORNJI& 
 DAVIS 
 
|E come to-day, in these con 
 genial surroundings of the 
 Passmore Edwards Settle 
 ment, to unveil the bust of a great 
 American, certainly one of the greatest 
 of them all, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
 the centenary of whose birth, on the 
 25th of May last, was celebrated with 
 reverence and enthusiasm throughout 
 his own country and in many distant 
 lands. Hundreds of speakers and 
 writers have been discussing his 
 merits, and I have absolutely nothing 
 new to offer on a subject so freshly 
 familiar. I would much rather set him 
 before you in his own words than in 
 any of my own. 
 
 A 2 
 
His claims to distinction as poet, 
 philosopher and prophet, have been 
 warmly advanced by his disciples, 
 and as freely contested by the critics, 
 but whatever controversy there is 
 about him seems to me to be 
 really a war of words and a contest 
 of definitions. It is generally agreed 
 that he was one of the great in 
 tellectual lights of the nineteenth 
 century ; that, as a result of his forty 
 years of wide and almost universal 
 reading, profound contemplation, 
 brilliant writing, and enlarged dis 
 course, he came to be recognised as 
 one of the wisest of men, a great and 
 efficient teacher of his own generation, 
 and of that which came after it, and 
 far in advance of his age on many 
 important questions. 
 
He certainly had a vivid and fertile 
 imagination, a wonderful power of 
 idealizing the facts of nature and the 
 events of life, and a quick sympathy 
 with all that concerned and interested 
 humanity, which enabled him to 
 produce some poems which still live 
 after half a century, and which are 
 likely to find many readers in coming 
 generations. 
 
 His neighbours assembled at 
 Concord Bridge to celebrate the 
 completion of the monument which 
 marked the spot where the plain 
 farmers of New England offered 
 the first armed resistance to British 
 troops. There bloodshed on both 
 sides began the long conflict which 
 divided the British Empire into two 
 independent nations, nations which 
 
now at last happily vie with each other 
 in words and acts of mutual friendship, 
 and in efforts to advance the best 
 interests of mankind. In a single 
 stanza he told the thrilling story in 
 words that still echo like the sound of 
 a trumpet : 
 
 " By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled farmers stood, 
 
 And fired the shot heard round the World." 
 
 Recalling his visit to Rome, and 
 what he had seen of the work of 
 Michael Angelo, as an Architect, 
 upon the great Cathedral with its 
 soaring dome, he apostrophized 
 architecture as the Divine Art, 
 directly illuminated by the Spirit of 
 God, in words that ought to be 
 immortal : 
 
" The hand that rounded Peter's Dome, 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity ; 
 Himself from God he could not free ; 
 He builded better than he knew : 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew." 
 
 He had absolute faith in the close 
 relation between the living God and 
 the spirit of the individual man, and in 
 the boundless possibilities of human 
 nature as its direct result. 
 
 Listen to another single verse which 
 ought to live as long as the language 
 lasts, expressing this idea. He was 
 showing how noble youth of America 
 and of England, brought up, it may 
 be, in luxury and ease, in sport and 
 idling, prove to be heroes when the 
 trumpet sounds and their names are 
 called ; and turning their backs on 
 all they have prized before, on home 
 
and love itself, risk life and limb and 
 happiness to save or serve the cause 
 of their country or their king : 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low ' Thou must/ 
 The youth replies, ' I can/ " 
 
 Nor are these utterances isolated 
 and exceptional in their style and 
 character. Much of his poetry 
 breathes the same lofty spirit, the same 
 living imagery. And sometimes he 
 was master of a lighter vein, full of 
 sparkling wit and genial fun. 
 
 Witness his fable of the quarrel 
 between the squirrel and the moun 
 tain : 
 
 " The Mountain and the Squirrel had a quarrel, 
 And the former called the latter 'little Prig/ 
 Bun replied : 
 ' You are doubtless very big, 
 
 8 
 
But all sorts of things and weather 
 
 Must be taken in together 
 
 To make up a year 
 
 And a sphere, 
 
 And I think it no disgrace 
 
 To occupy my place. 
 
 If I'm not so large as you, 
 
 You are not so small as I, 
 
 And not half so spry. 
 
 I'll not deny you make 
 
 A very pretty squirrel track. 
 
 Talents differ : all is well and wisely put, 
 
 If I cannot carry forests on my back 
 
 Neither can you crack a nut.' ' 
 
 Whether he is justly to be called a 
 great poet or is destined to an immor 
 tality of centuries or not, he gave us 
 much delightful poetry, and the lovers 
 of poetry, who form but a small part 
 of the readers of the English language, 
 will always find much to cherish in 
 what he has written. 
 
 You all know the main facts of his 
 simple and uneventful life. He was 
 
a Puritan of the Puritans, or if there 
 be such a thing as a Puritan of the 
 Puritans of the Puritans, he was 
 exactly that. He was descended from 
 a long line of dissenting clergymen, 
 beginning with the original immigrant 
 who had fled from persecution at the 
 hands of Archbishop Laud. Being 
 silenced for Non-conformity he had 
 escaped to New England, and founded 
 a church at Concord, the little village 
 fifteen miles from Boston, which 
 was to be Emerson's home for life. 
 
 Graduating at Harvard College at 
 the age of 18, Emerson studied 
 theology, and, under the influence 
 of Dr. Channing, he became a 
 Unitarian Minister, a Protestant 
 of the Protestants, and soon found 
 himself the pastor of a church in 
 
 10 
 
Boston ; but even the gentle trammels 
 of that mild communion could not 
 long contain his independent souL 
 He gave up the sacred office, and all 
 the difficulties which it involved for 
 his gentle spirit, and retired to his 
 ancestral village of Concord, where 
 for forty years he devoted himself to 
 plain living and high thinking, to deep 
 reading and writing and lecturing, by 
 which he obtained his livelihood, for 
 he had been born and bred in poverty 
 and received nothing by inheritance. 
 
 To two successive generations of his 
 countrymen, in his lectures, addresses 
 and published writings, he gave, from 
 time to time, the rich fruits of his 
 reading, study, and contemplation. 
 He read everything good, but 
 Shakespeare, Plato, Plutarch, Goethe, 
 
Bacon, Swedenborg and Montaigne 
 seem to have been his favourite authors. 
 He remembered what he read as few 
 people do, and made notes of whatever 
 impressed him, which furnished the 
 material for those copious and apt 
 illustrations of which his works are 
 full. 
 
 Though he severed his connection 
 with the churches he certainly had a 
 religion of his own which exalted and 
 spiritualized him. Dr. Holmes, who 
 knew him well and is one of his most 
 appreciative biographers, says : " His 
 creed was a brief one, but he carried it 
 everywhere with him. In all he did, 
 in all he said, and, so far as all outward 
 signs could show, in all his thoughts, 
 the indwelling spirit was his light and 
 guide : through all nature he looked 
 
 12 
 
up to Nature's God ; and if he did 
 not worship the man Christ Jesus as 
 the Churches of Christendom have 
 done, he followed His footsteps so 
 nearly that our good Methodist, Father 
 Taylor, spoke of him as more like 
 Christ than any man he had known." 
 The great influence which, by his 
 wisdom and spotless life, he rapidly 
 acquired and maintained to the end, 
 certainly had a marked effect in 
 mitigating the rigid tone of dogmatism 
 from which he revolted. Dean 
 Stanley, on his return from America, 
 is said to have reported that " religion 
 had there passed through an evolution 
 from Edwards to Emerson, and that 
 the genial atmosphere which Emerson 
 had done so much to promote is 
 shared by all the churches equally/' 
 
The same Father Taylor, a great 
 apostle of Methodism, was so im 
 pressed by his pure and exalted 
 spirit, that when some of his 
 Methodist friends took him to task 
 for maintaining his friendship with 
 Emerson, on the ground that, being a 
 Unitarian, he must go to a place not 
 to be mentioned in good society, he 
 replied, "It does look so, but I am 
 sure of one thing ; if Emerson does 
 go to that place he will change the 
 climate there, and emigration will set 
 that way." 
 
 Of his prose writings, how is it 
 possible to say more than was said 
 by Matthew Arnold, who judged him 
 very critically, and cannot be said to 
 have exaggerated anything in his 
 favour ? What he says is this : 
 
6 As Wordsworth's poetry is in 
 my judgment the most important 
 work done in verse in our language 
 during the present century," (the 
 nineteenth, of course), "so Emer 
 son's Essays are, I think, the most 
 important work done in prose." 
 His busy brain was never still, his 
 driving pen was never idle, his elo 
 quent voice, in lectures, and dis 
 courses, profound, entertaining and 
 instructive, was heard by his country 
 men with ever increasing delight and 
 satisfaction. Self-reliance, absolute 
 trust in his own conscience and 
 convictions, and a fearless following 
 of these in conduct and action, 
 wherever they might lead, were the 
 constant guides of his own life ; and 
 he never failed to urge upon his 
 
hearers and readers to pursue the 
 same path. 
 
 He appealed always to the higher, 
 the highest, motives, instincts, pas 
 sions of our nature, moral, in 
 tellectual and spiritual, and was 
 never content to discover and re 
 peat what other men had said and 
 thought on the subject in hand, 
 except to illustrate his own thoughts 
 and conclusions, which he evolved 
 fearlessly from his own inner light, 
 to which alone he looked for inspira 
 tion. The wide scope of subjects 
 which he treated embraced the whole 
 range of human life, conduct and as 
 pirations. His mission was to arouse, 
 to stimulate and elevate the public 
 and private life of America to a 
 higher and nobler plane. 
 
 16 
 
He began to answer Sydney 
 Smith's cynical question " In the 
 four quarters of the globe who reads 
 an American book ?." and led 
 the way in rescuing American 
 literature from the sluggish and torpid 
 stream in which it had long been 
 confined. He lived to see it flowing 
 in a broad and ever widening current, 
 which refreshed and animated the 
 whole of our national life. It was his 
 peculiar gift and function to stimulate 
 and inspire those who laboured with 
 him or followed after him in the field 
 of letters, and before he died the real 
 question came to be " In the four 
 quarters of the globe, who does not 
 read American books and recognize 
 American ideas ? " 
 
 As time went on his books found 
 
many sympathetic and admiring 
 readers among thoughtful men and 
 women in England, and in foreign 
 countries into whose many languages 
 they were translated, and the Emerson 
 cult became very widely spread. 
 Herman Grimm wrote to him from 
 Berlin : " Whenever I think of 
 America I think of you," and I 
 have no doubt that to many serious 
 and earnest souls in many lands, the 
 name of our young Republic suggests 
 first the image of this profound thinker 
 and stimulating teacher. 
 
 I confess that of all the authors with 
 whom I have become familiar, I turn 
 always first to him for light and leading, 
 and find him more suggestive, more 
 instructive, more awakening than any 
 other ; there are but few subjects 
 
 iS 
 
dealing with the conduct of life, or the 
 duties of man, or the study of nature, 
 of which he has not treated more or 
 less directly ; and anyone who has to 
 take up such a subject for the first 
 time, cannot begin better than by turn 
 ing to his pages to see what he has 
 said about it. 
 
 President Eliot, of Harvard, in a 
 carefully prepared essay, quite worthy 
 of Emerson himself, read in Boston 
 on the centennial of his birth, has 
 demonstrated that Mr. Emerson was 
 far in advance of his time on many 
 moral, social, and political questions, 
 and that he indicated, with singular 
 sagacity and foresight, the course of 
 their future development as the same 
 actually occurred so that although 
 the ranks of the prophets are closed 
 
against him, we may well describe him 
 as the forerunner of American thought. 
 He rarely took part in any con 
 troversies, although many were raised 
 in the path of his advancing progress, 
 but left them to be fought out by 
 others, while he kept the even tenor 
 of his way, thinking and teaching still. 
 He cherished with unfaltering hope 
 and confidence the noblest aspirations 
 ifor his country, and uniformly predicted 
 its ultimate success and triumph in 
 those better things that constitute true 
 civilization ; but he never hesitated to 
 scourge his countrymen for their 
 shortcomings, which stood in the way 
 of their reaching the final goal of his 
 high ideal. This he could always do 
 with effect and authority, because he 
 stood aside from politics, and because 
 
 20 
 
his courage and virtue commanded 
 universal reverence. 
 
 He lent the generous and telling 
 influence of his character and opinion 
 to the cause of reform, but sometimes 
 turned rather a cold shoulder to 
 practical reformers, whose rough and 
 tumble methods were at variance 
 with his gentle and retiring spirit. 
 In great crises, however, his soul 
 was stirred, and his voice rang out 
 like a megaphone across the land. 
 
 In his address at Concord in com 
 memoration of Emancipation in the 
 West Indies he concluded with these 
 prophetic words : 
 
 " The sentiment of Right, once very low 
 and indistinct, but ever more articulate because 
 it is the voice of the Universe, pronounces 
 Freedom. The Power that built this fabric of 
 things affirms it in the heart ; and in the 
 
 21 C 
 
history of the First of August has made a sign 
 to the ages, of His will." 
 
 Within twenty years from that utter 
 ance, Lincoln had signed the pro 
 clamation which freed all the slaves 
 in America, and the vast Empire of 
 Russia had no longer a slave within 
 its borders. 
 
 When Sumner was struck down in 
 the Senate for words spoken in debate, 
 he declared : 
 
 " The events of the last few years and 
 months and days have taught us the lessons 
 of centuries. I think we must get rid of 
 slavery or we must get rid of freedom." 
 
 When the attempt was made to 
 force slavery upon Kansas by armed 
 might, he said : 
 
 " I wish we could stop every man who is 
 about to leave the country. Send home every 
 one who is abroad lest they should find no 
 
 22 
 
country to return to. Come home and stay 
 at home while there is a country to save. 
 When it is lost, it will be time enough for 
 any who are luckless enough to remain alive, 
 to gather up their clothes and depart to some 
 land where Freedom exists." 
 
 When the Proclamation of Eman 
 cipation was actually signed, he said : 
 
 "The first condition of success is secured 
 in putting ourselves right. We have recovered 
 ourselves from our false position and planted 
 ourselves on a law of Nature.'' 
 
 "If that fail, 
 
 The pillared firmament is rottenness, 
 And Earth's base built on stubble." 
 
 " The Government has assured itself of the 
 best constituency in the world. Every spark 
 of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every re 
 ligious heart, every man of honor, every poet, 
 every philosopher, the generosity of the cities, 
 the health of the country, the strong arms of 
 the mechanic, the endurance of farmers, the 
 passionate conscience of women, the sympathy 
 of distant nations, all rally to its support." 
 23 
 
When Lincoln was struck down he 
 said of him : 
 
 " By his courage, his justice, his even 
 temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he 
 stood a heroic figure in the centre of a heroic 
 epoch. He is the true history of the American 
 people in his time. Step by step he walked 
 before them ; slow with their slowness ; quicken 
 ing his march by theirs ; the true representative 
 of this continent, an entirely public man, father 
 of his country ; the pulse of twenty millions 
 throbbing in his heart, the thought of their 
 minds articulated by his tongue. Only Wash 
 ington can compare with him in fortune." 
 
 Scouted at first as a mystic and a 
 dreamer, Ralph Waldo Emerson lived 
 long enough to receive the general 
 homage of the confidence and affection 
 of his countrymen. They honored 
 him for his dauntless courage, his 
 sublime devotion to what he believed 
 to be the truth and the right, his clear 
 
and controlling conscience, his wisdom 
 of which they garnered the ripe fruits, 
 and his life-long endeavour to elevate 
 the standard of their literature, 
 morals, and manners. They ad 
 mired his unfaltering patriotism, and 
 his ardent sympathy with human 
 nature, which no time could limit and 
 no continent could bound. They 
 loved him for his sweet and simple 
 nature and life, his serene and spotless 
 character, his modest and unassuming 
 manners, and, most of all, because he 
 loved them, and spent his life in 
 thinking and working for their highest 
 welfare. Heart and soul he was full 
 of sunshine ; he shed its beams all 
 about him and saw and revealed only 
 the bright side. 
 
 I rejoice that this striking image 
 
of him has found an abiding-place 
 in this noble building, the home and 
 centre of a great and good work. I 
 congratulate Mr. Passmore Edwards 
 and Mrs. Humphry Ward on ac 
 quiring this bust as a fitting ornament 
 of this Institute, on the shelves of 
 whose Library his books will be found. 
 I am sure that they will reach many 
 readers, and know that they will exer 
 cise on their minds nothing but a 
 wholesome, elevating and inspiring 
 influence. It all depends on what you 
 read for. If you read only for dis 
 sipation of thought, or for oblivious 
 languor, don't touch Emerson. But 
 if you seek for ideas and information, 
 for light and leading, for real 
 inspiration, for love of country, 
 and faith in God and faith in 
 
man, you will find them all in 
 him. 
 
 Three years ago, when " The Hall 
 of Fame for Great Americans ' was 
 established in the University of New 
 York by the lavish generosity of a 
 citizen, the name of Emerson came 
 out from the public election, confirmed 
 by the votes of the council, as the 
 eighth among famous native-born 
 Americans of all the past. The seven 
 who preceded him were Washington, 
 Lincoln, Webster, Franklin, Grant, 
 Marshall, Jefferson, all men of affairs, 
 of the greatest affairs. But Emerson, 
 as a pure man of letters, stood first in 
 the hearts of his countrymen, and 
 there we may be content to leave him 
 to the judgment of posterity. 
 
V: 
 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 RENEWED BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO IMMEDIATE 
 RECALL 
 
 12 JUL '62 HMD 
 
 I 6 
 
 LIBRARY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS 
 
 Book SJip-20m-8,'61(C1623s4)458 
 
PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Syracuse, N. Y ' 
 Stockton, 
 
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 , Calif' 
 
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